Saturday, May 13, 2006

Sadly, it has been a full week since my last entry, also another SSOTW summary. As we draw closer to deployment, the workload increases exponentially. Ranges have filled the schedule for the past two weeks, day after day and in many cases at night. We just finished another round of ranges and it is suspect that we are done with them. But one of the few things I've learned is to not trust superiors. Which brings me to this week's nominees for Stupid Shit of The Week™ :

Bold faced lies to subordinates

Moving a huge gym mat into a connex

Sending weights to Iraq with us

And the winner is:

Bold faced lies to subordinates!

As we finished a range at 4:30 in the morning this Wednesday, we were given a late call of 10:00 after almost twenty straight hours of work. After doing quite literally nothing all day, we were finally released sometime around 5PM Thursday evening. Not an hour went by when we found out that our platoon was relieving another platoon for ammo guard at midnight, and that everyone is going. As usual, the story changed three times over the course of an hour, but what was final was that six guys were going out, and they would receive Friday off as a consolation for volunteering for the shaft. Figuring it came from an influential person, I thought it sounded like a legit deal and jumped on it. As we get there, we decide to clean up the range to get a start on what the whole platoon would be doing the next morning. At about 2AM we decided to call it quits. As everyone began arriving from their full nights sleep in warm beds, they bitched about us not finishing the job with little time and inadequate manpower. It was then when we found out the truth we secretly held in our hearts: no day off for us. Thanks for the help and for volunteering to hose away your night though, suckers. We each learned the bitter lesson of walking into lucrative promises. I can't think of a better morale booster than an old fashioned bait and switch.

The gym mat, now there is another black hole of common sense and reason. We have this rubber sparring mat that is maybe 30 feet by 25 feet. It's so thick and long that it couldn't fit up the stairwell to get to the second floor. Some genius thought of erecting an elaborate system of pulleys on the second floor balcony to get it up, using a Bronco for leverage. It made it up after almost crushing several people to death and almost ripping off both the handrails on the balcony and the frame of the truck. But Friday it was decided to throw the mat off the roof and load it into a connex, bound for Iraq. Now, before you ask if there are facilities at bases in Iraq that have mats and matlike surfaces like the one we're loading, the answer is yes. I couldn't give you a straight answer as to why we're taking it, but you know how it goes by now dear reader, if you've been current with my updates. I am supremely interested in what civilians think when reading about these parades of nonsense I march to every day, so feel free to leave comments or questions.

This blog was created by a veteran of the United States Army and in no way should be taken to reflect the sensibilities of the Department of Defense, The Department of Veterans Affairs or any other credible organization.